


Working as a Team

by darthneko, DragovianKnight



Series: Universal Constant [2]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime, World of Warcraft
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Angst, F/F, F/M, Found Family, Frag this War, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, OCs are awesome, POV Alternating, Team as Family, dealing with death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-27
Updated: 2013-11-18
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:17:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darthneko/pseuds/darthneko, https://archiveofourown.org/users/DragovianKnight/pseuds/DragovianKnight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before the Great War there was time for leisure activities - socializing, games, groups of mecha who only knew each other across parsecs via the DataNet. Now, as the war marches forward and squadrons are broken up and reassigned, split between Autobot and Decepticon lines, comfort and companionship may come from the most unlikely of places among those gaming groups.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Scroll of Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

> [Guild of Awesome](http://archiveofourown.org/works/824800/chapters/1565483) grew out of a shared TF role-play and joint Guild on World of Warcraft. The Guild ficlets were just fun little things - this is the much more serious sequel. It's not a crossover, more like a meta fusion, and "Cybertronians playing WoW" may strike you as funny but trust me, that's not where we're going with it.
> 
> The concept of the Cybertronian Guard and Ironhide's early life are drawn from Rose's fic [Guardian Spark](http://archiveofourown.org/works/681462/chapters/1250025).
> 
> (If you know Rose (Neko) then you know she has a habit of taking what sounds like crack and spinning it serious and plausible. So give this a shot! And trust us, the OCs really are awesome.)

"What th' frag did yeh think yeh were doin'?" Ironhide snarled, slapping his hands down hard enough on the table to make all of the contents - and the two unlucky mechs standing on the other side - jump. "Throw up a big Pit damned flag, here we are?"

"They already know where we are," one of them - dusty blue with black accents, a thick Polyhex labor accent, and more solid metal than processor - muttered sullenly. 

"An' yeh just thought they needed t' know what channels we use, did yeh?" Ironhide drawled. "No, because yeh weren't thinkin', yeh were too busy slackin' off _playin' games!_ Usin' up signal strength we need, cloggin' th' relays, an' tellin' every 'Con on this half of th' hemisphere where we are!" He stabbed a finger at the table surface. "Ah want all of it. Right now, every chip, an' th' two of yeh are gonna delete every scrap of file an' report to medical to confirm it before yeh go back on duty."

He expected the outburst of protestation and was shouting it down before the two culprits even got started. "SHUT IT! Yeh think Ah'm jokin'? Yeh want meh writin' this up on yer records? Best case, it's misappropriation of supplies an yer stuck on base countin' ammo and runnin' for the medics until yer rusted - worst case, that's leakin' intel to th' enemy! Are yeh HEARIN' meh, glitchwit?"

They were, and sullenly affirmed as much, then equally sullenly produced the game plugs they had been using. Because they were young, Ironhide thought numbly to himself, and they had just wanted to play a bit in their offduty hours. Bad luck the admittedly small drain on the camp comm channels had been noticed, worse luck that they fell under his command until such time as their training was finished.

And because they were young and still thought they wanted to fight, they gave him the game chips and made all of the appropriate yes-sir-no-sir noises and trudged off to go report to medical for a clean wipe of the processor circuits they had devoted to gaming. Ironhide could, logistically, see the need, but he didn't have to like it. Left on his own, he would have left it at chip confiscation - there had been a time when he had been the youngling getting slapped down by his elders for breaking a comm blackout for the sake of some idle amusement, and that alone had been enough to impress upon him never to do it again.

The Autobot forces took a dimmer and more strict view of such things, and a consequently less view of how much their soldiers could be trusted to do on their own. Confiscate and wipe, said the rules, so he did. Venting, Ironhide tossed the chips into one of his storage compartments and went back to the piles of reports that weren't getting any smaller for being left alone.

The chips remained there so long he had nearly forgotten where he had come by them the next time he dug around in that compartment. He was in the tiny quarters his rank afforded him - he had protested, once, that he could just as easily double or triple up with the enlisted ranks but the look THAT had gotten him had cut off that line of reasoning. 

The one good thing about a private space was having the room to spread out a little - even if it was just across his own berth - to do his own repairs. A faulty relay was plaguing his secondary cannon; he knew precisely what it was, but it needed stripping down half his own plating just to get to and fishing around between strut and fluid lines to dig out the circuit connection that needed resoldering. He was fishing for an extra micro clamp, fumbling one handed through his sub space, when he came across the game chips. 

It wouldn't have normally given him any pause, except to maybe mark them for wiping and repurposing, but one chip was emblazoned with an icon that was achingly familiar, the lines of the fictional organic insignia limned in gold against blue on the back of the plug. Ironhide rubbed his thumb lightly across it, sagging back to let the wall catch his mass as he stared at it.

They hadn't taken his memories. His code was riddled in errors he spent a little more time every rotation patching, but they had left his files intact. The game files he had once used had been erased before he had ever set pede on Cybertron - purged, along with most unnecessary files, in the last days when they realized... when they had _guessed_... when memory space came at a premium, all other concerns eclipsed by the need to cable the cohort together, to swap and share until they were, all of them, the sum of the whole, copied in wholesale file chunks that they had all meant to restructure and compress later, when they had time.

Ironhide had the time, when he could make it, and was still working through the dense layers of files to defrag and compress them all. The way it slowed down his lateral threads was easily passed off as age, as an innate slowness in archaic systems, rather than the swamped dataload that it was. He had more room than he had at the start, but he had calculated another three quarters of a vorn to finish, assuming he lasted that long.

It meant his personal files pertaining to the game were gone, but if the Velen hub was still active, if the cloud still retained his account data...

There were smart and glitched ways to go about it. The trainees he had confiscated the chips from had been careless - Ironhide wasn't. He set up a low-feed secured channel before he began, hidden under a records query that would take at least a breem of download time. Only then, plates still half off and tools shoved to the end of the berth, did he brace himself against the wall and slip the game chip into an auxillary port, letting it unpack itself into his temporary files. He very carefully didn't ask himself WHY, glossing it over with half thought explanations of needing to erase cloud data, of checking the status of the hub as an activity check for civilian stability, of any number of things, all of which were only partial truths at best.

It unfolded within his simulation threads exactly as he remembered and Ironhide thought he had been braced, he thought he had been _ready_ , but he wasn't. It was an imperfect sim at best, organic made, nothing up to Cybertronian standards, but it was beautifully, achingly, _FAMILIAR_. Sound and color and shape, something he had immersed himself in countless times, but so out of place and familiar against the charge flux his life had become that it ached all the way through his spark, choking him.

The hub was still there, his account opening easily to his password. His avatar - the same familiar heavy framed organic he had used from the start - took shape in the capital city of the faction he served. It was mid rotation by the server chrono, the light from the virtual star warm and welcoming, the little central square bustling with dozens of different avatar shapes and colors. 

Just the way it had always been. Just like he had never left. 

He was going to lose it in another nanoklik. His avatar, too simple to really convey emotion, only looked around as it always did when left alone, the tumultuous glyphs in his field too complex for it to register as anything except junk code. He went through motions by pure automatic, all the things he had always done when he logged in - quest check, status check, guild - oh, Primus bless, their _guild_ \- and it was there that he pulled himself up sharp because one name was highlighted as being online. One familiar name, and in his room Ironhide pulled his knees to his chassis, burying his faceplates against them, the tremors rattling his armor plates. 

[Irohne] Shadow? Yeh there?

The Lucky Thirteen had been worried enough to check, when half their guild stopped logging in without word or warning. A double handful of designations, casual references to "the Twelfth", were more than enough information to lead to the Twelfth Mobile Strike Squadron of the Cybertronian Guard, recalled and reassigned around the time they'd gone dark. Reassigned to _where_ was less clear, but they had reached an uneasy agreement that it was too early to dig deeper and risk breaking open a scraplet nest, when in all likelihood the others would turn up again as soon as they settled into their own assignments. Unspoken agreement meant someone was always monitoring the guild channel, less intently but no less diligently than they would monitor an official objective. 

In spite of all that, Shadow wasn't ready for the sign-in that appeared on the in-game display, or for the message - same as she'd gotten a thousand times - that followed. Like he'd never left, and even with processor threads swamped with relief she half expected him to follow up with something he needed to farm for his cohort, or some new instance he'd found and wanted to share. Which was ridiculous, of course, when he hadn't been on in orn and she was the one with half a bank vault full of equipment she'd found and saved for him.

[Anying]: Ironhide! Where the frag have you been? 

_I missed you_ and _we've been worried, you fragger_ didn't make it into the message. Instead, she checked his location and added

[Anying] Don't you dare move, I'm hearthing to you.

For one fraction of a nanoklik Ironhide almost logged out. It was queued, but the command died unsent. _Get out,_ a portion of his processor was screaming _leave, log off, danger,_ like the burning line crawling urgency to _PROTECT_. He shuttered his optics, tucked his helm closer into his knees, the grasp of his hands leaving scraped dents in the greaves of his shins. 

Three kliks and a fraction of eternity later Shadow's familiar avatar - the smaller femme version of his own - came charging up to him, her regular half-decayed companion pet trailing in her wake. The avatars weren't designed to interact with each other but he was treated to the achingly familiar round of cuddled up hugs via the message channel. His reply was automatic, so ingrained he couldn't have stopped himself, but in the doing of he found the error - he couldn't _stop_. 

Shadow was saying things, asking things, and he couldn't focus enough to answer. Couldn't untangle his own threads enough to STOP, the same useless functionless glyphs spilling out in a stream, nothing but distant glyphs in a comm channel.

Irohne hugs Anying.

His plates were clenched and shaking hard enough to hurt and there was a thin, garbled sound of pure machine noise that he dimmly knew was his own, choked in a vocalizer feeding back too many glitches and too much static to be of any use. It was nothing at all like the contact of field or plating, nothing but virtual simm sharing, but it was all he could do and it poured out, spamming the fragile distance connection between them. 

Irohne hugs Anying.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
Irohne hugs Anying.

Shadow tried, for half a klik, to tell herself the game was broken, the same action descriptor repeating over and over. Better than considering that Ironhide was broken, better than remembering the tank-churning horror they'd all felt over the Twelfth being reassigned, split apart and scattered.

Ironhide wasn't responding to anything she said and there was nothing she could do, no option in the game to grab him and hold on. Uselessly, she moved her avatar closer to his, until the two of them overlapped, their idle animations looping as endlessly as the string of hugs they couldn't actually share.

She diverted enough of her attention to send a message to Tundra on a secure channel, a bare bones _Ironhide's alive, something's wrong, we need to find him, we need to find **them**_ that would, she knew, be more than enough. Then all of her attention switched back to the game, as if somehow she could overcome the limitations of organic programming and dredge up the information she needed from Ironhide simply by observing his avatar.

[Anying] Ironhide.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
[Anying] Ironhide, I need you to talk to me.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
[Anying] If you talk to me, I can find you.  
Irohne hugs Anying.  
Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
[Anying] Please, Hide. Talk to me.

Ironhide was parsing the glyphs on a delay, scrolling up his HUD before he could process them. It took several more repetitions before he could make himself stop and then it was Shadow flooding their shared channel with exhortations to talk, to say something, while his own avatar stood in mute uselessness.

He sat because he needed to not be standing, even in the virtual representation of a game. His avatar dropped, folding onto the ground, the calm serenity that his class of avatar displayed when sitting bringing both a tiny measure of comfort and the spark ripping pain of the familiar past. He had, he found himself thinking in fractured horror, all of their personal codes. He could have logged on as any of them, the guild roster list still open on his HUD and handfuls of designations in the dimmed colors that indicated offline status listed there. 

It hit him like a blaster strike to a sensor cluster, sickening in its intensity. He turned off his vocalizer to throttle the keen that wanted to build like a creeping reaction through his systems. He was guild master and for one sickening moment he found himself making the command queues to delete those names - anything, everything, just to stop _looking_ at them. 

He managed to stop himself, closing the window from his view instead. It didn't make pulling himself together any easier and Shadow was the one spamming their private channel now, measured repetitions of 'talk to me' and 'where are you'. Drawing a pained intake through systems that were cold and burning all at once, Ironhide carefully pieced together the barest bones of an answer that said nothing but was all he could safely force himself to voice. 

[Irohne] Cybertron. Autobot. Have meh training recruits.

It wasn't a good answer but it was an answer, when she had started to worry she wouldn't get one. If the game had been capable of it, Shadow would have taken his avatar's hands in her own; since she couldn't, she sat down next to him, phantom frames still overlapping. An empty gesture, but she didn't need to feel the broken press of his field, not when that string of repeating glyphs was still available on the game's HUD, like a distress beacon. For any of the Thirteen, a break like that would have been cause for extraction, official protocols be damned. Ironhide wasn't one of them, except in the virtual sense of shared game and guild; he didn't have the shield, limited as it was, of Labyrinth's influence, and they didn't have the freedom to act as if he were their own.

Shadow didn't _care_.

Cybertron was a big world, but the sections in Autobot control - the sections secure enough to train recruits - were finite, manageable. Even if he couldn't tell her more, they could find him, eventually. Would find him, unless he could convince her not to, and the odds that he was that convincing a liar were so slim as to be non-existent. 

[Anying] I missed you. Don't...disappear on me, okay? 

Ironhide wanted to trace the glyphs, inscribe them into the virtual display of his HUD, leave a lingering imprint like optical burn to be traced over and over again. Something tangible, something that said they had been _missed_ , that life as he had known it had not just vanished with no one the wiser. 

[Irohne] One breem. Channel secured.

It wasn't even proper glyphs, the already corrupted edges of his diction turning towards the short, Basic derived mission cant they had used in enemy territory. He had deleted countless screencaptures of their shared games to make room; he took more, now, even knowing she was not her avatar, that the femme behind the image looked nothing like it, but the shared images was one that _they_ shared, familiar and theirs, and precious for that alone. 

[Irohne] Missed you.

It was the tip of the missile, the rest just waiting to implode through him at the lightest brush. Ironhide wasn't venting any more, systems locked up tight and rigid, whole frame vibrating to the pained spin of his spark. 

Irohne hugs Anying.  
Irohne cuddles up to Anying  
Ironhe needs a hug.  
Anying hugs Irohne.

A breem with a secured channel was, really, more than she could have hoped. It gave her time to ease a little more information out of him; it gave her time to _be_ with him, even if the familiar interface of the game was frustratingly inadequate for this. Though that might be for the best; Ironhide was hurting, and Shadow knew that when you were hurting enough, even rescue could look like danger.

Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
[Anying] I've been watching for you. There's a scrapload of gear saved for you in my bank.

It wasn't what she wanted to say. She wanted coordinates, security intel, how fragging far from Autobot optics he could get before his absence was noticed. She wanted to tell him she was coming to get him. She wanted to ask what had happened to the others.

Later. _Later._ Now, the important thing was keeping him here as long as she could, as long as it was safe, and convincing him to keep logging in to meet her.

[Anying] Missed you so much. Primus, it's good to have you back.

Anying hugs Irohne.  
Anying loves Irohne.

He was shaking with the force of the pain clenched in his spark, plates trembling, hydraulics locked tightly inwards. The small space of the room allotted to him was too large, empty and cold and _unsafe_ , devoid of an spark or EM except his own. 

Ironhide's avatar lurched forward a step, then stopped. He choked, the sound grating static through his vocalizer. Hydraulics creaked as he hunched further into himself, forcing himself to concentrate only on the game simulation where the rippling flinch scorching through him had translated as a primed weapon in hand despite the lack of target.

[Irohne] Can't stay. Sorry.

_Not safe,_ was the unspoken part. _Danger, stay alert._

She wasn't part of his squad, but she was close enough that he ached for bringing danger to her. Ached more for the simple fact that she knew them - had known them, their designations, their personalities, had overheard and been part of their interactions, had witnessed first hand the spark that was their squadron. It made it better and harder all at once, his next glyphs picked out one at a time with painstaking slowness. 

[Irohne] Remember us.

[Anying] Don't leave me.

It was too much and too fast, and Shadow - spark aching, unable to catch hold of him and keep him there - fully expected his avatar to fade from view. When it didn't immediately she moved her own avatar back in front of him, where the default camera view would force him to look at her.

Anying hugs Irohne.   
[Anying] If it's not safe for you, go, but promise me you'll come back. We remember, Hide, and there's always one of us watching for your squad. Sign in, any time, and we will be here for you.

Still there, silent but _there_ , and it could just be the delay the game sometimes had, displaying his avatar when he was already gone. She prayed it wasn't.

[Anying] We dug up some of what happened, but recalled and reassigned obviously isn't the half of it.   
Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
Anying loves Irohne.  
[Anying] Don't tell me to remember you. Tell me where you are, tell me how we can help you, and we will MAKE a way. It's what we do. We don't abandon our own.

Recalled and reassigned. It hurt, to see those glyphs, the ones that had made it to the official broadcasts, traced on his screen by the femme who was his friend rather than the strangers who didn't know any better. Ironhide slid slowly down the wall, curling into himself on the surface of the berth. 

[Irohne] Decommisioned.

It was nothing but the truth, even if the official stamp was buried in records locked by the Primacy. It wouldn't take genius to puzzle it out in retrospect, when there were no Guardians left and the ongoing march of civil conflict was sweeping even the reassuring public message of Cyberton's guard recalled to help defend the safety of the populace out of the news grids. 

The rest of her words made his stifle another keen, the sharp ache of longing clawing through him. The Thirteen couldn't help, there was no help to be had, not already broken and gutted as they were, there was nothing...

There was something so base it wasn't even hope, just jagged flashes of _need_ , impossible but implacable. _We don't abandon our own_ was too close, too familiar, spawning short Basic glyphs of pure desperation. 

[Irohne] Safety first.

_Backup needed_ was what he couldn't say, couldn't implicate her or throw her headlong against the forces that had broken the Guard; one small cohort-squad, against the Primacy, was an impossible equation.

It came to him in between one pained ventilation and the next, the kind of unique and crazy cyphers they had used between themselves, unbreakable only because they were gibberish outside of the cohort that drew them from their own daily interactions. Shadow had a paler version of history with him, projected through the game world they shared. 

A direct superimposition of one image across the other placed Iacon in the Temple of Storms and Kaon in the Temple of the Red Crane. It even made an ugly sort of sense, the ancient frozen heart of a waning power and the source of the Sha of Despair that had taken hold of hopeless sparks.  He reversed them, twisting the image of Cybertron from north to south pole, simply because they had always played in order to reach the mythical ancestral home of their avatar species, and pulled up his last known data in coordinates. 

It took effort to string whole glyphs together, composing them into something that made sense. He was utter slag at lying with glyph and field in his own proximity, but Ironhide could manage a surface gloss by glyph alone in the removed distance of a chat. Enough, he thought, that Shadow would read what was otherwise a perfectly normal in-game chat for anyone who didn't have their shared background.

[Irohne] Palisade found a rare spawn. Off th' coast of Tanaris 68,59. And Lastline was hangin' around, lookin' for someone to run th' Stockades with.

Perfectly utterly innocuous game talk, because he had no illusions that the Velen hub wasn't easily hackable, and he could only cover his own comm useage, not the activity on the hub itself. Perfectly innocuous except that Palisade hadn't been online any more than he had in the orns since the recall, and Lastline had never played, preferring quieter games without combat in them. He was sure, though, that Crossfire had griped about their senior munitions tech often enough for the name to be familiar to Shadow. 

[Irohne] Can't stay long, duty shift. Ah'll try again later.  
Irohne loves Anying.  
[Irohne] Ah found an instance - Shado-pan monastery. Meet meh there sometime?

It hurt to stay, it hurt to log off. Blessedly, the game logged him out instantly, without the lingering wait that it sometimes took. His HUD went dark, booting back with his regular screens. Ironhide fumbled for the chit in his port, unplugging it and palming the tiny thing safely in his fist. 

She might not understand. He might not get another chance, or the risk might be too great. There were too many possibilities, too many things out of his control, but it had been all he could think of on the spur of the moment. Ironhide tucked his helm against his knees, vents stuttering, and tried very, very hard to think of nothing at all.

 _Try to keep me away,_ Shadow tried to respond, but his avatar had already vanished, and her glyphs only triggered the standard response that there was no player by his designation online.

She sat for a few kliks, face pressed into her hands, aching with all of the things the game's simple interface couldn't convey. By the time she could stand to turn her attention back to it, her avatar had sat down in the center of the busy virtual street, and the glyphs of her conversation with Ironhide had faded from view. Shadow scrolled back up, comforting herself with the the evidence he was alive, that he had been there, and paused, reading back over the last screen of their conversation.

The comment about Palisade could have been a glitch, a misfiled memory from before the squad went dark...before they were decommissioned, and Primus, she couldn't forgive herself for not pushing harder, for not using the very fact that so many records had been sealed as reason enough to go digging after them. Lastline, though, Shadow knew had never played; one of them would have pestered him into the guild if he had, and never mind if he didn't log in again. Ironhide might be hurting and desperate, but the few things he had actually said didn't seem to indicate a glitch that would make him forget which of his cohort had played the game.

Thoughtfully, Shadow pulled up the game map. Tanaris and the Stockades, on opposite sides of the world, far enough apart to make it all but impossible to match both to Autobot held or even heavily contested areas. Add Shado-pan monastery, and the areas she'd already flagged as being Ironhide's most likely assignment...

"Hide, you clever fragger." 

The two maps only fit one way, and trying to track a mech whose records were sealed, duty station unknown, was far different from digging around a specific base to see if their own record keeping was a bit sloppier. Palisade, especially, should be leaving a trail they could pick up; even if he wasn't acting as CMO, there should be medical reports signed off on, supply requisitions, scrap, _housing assignments_. She didn't know Lastline as well, but even without specific activity records to search, a lot could be done with a designation and location, particularly in an area that was seeing enough regular combat that reports might be patchy and glossed over, but were unlikely to be edited.

She left the game idling in the back of her processor, set to alert her if anyone from the missing half of their guild logged in. Most of the Thirteen were presently on assignment, but that left four of them to track down what they could. More than enough, she told herself, rising from the berth of her ship, where she'd retreated to play without Interlock's enthusiastic sharing of every exciting thing she found in her latest new game. More than enough, especially when they only needed one once they had locations and security and access codes.

Tundra had obviously already shared the news before Shadow joined them, all three busy before Shadow was close enough to share the maps and summary of Ironhide's conversation via shortwave ping; Interlock had taken on the thoughtful expression that meant she was hacking into things she shouldn't, while Tundra was sprawled out on the floor with her helm on Wildfire's lap, both their optics half-shuttered and flickering.

Wildfire tilted his head to the side as her data filtered through whatever he already had queued. "You know, Lab had me in Altihex not two orn ago." His glyphs were shaded toward unofficial business. "I'm pretty sure he can get us a few levels of access deeper than we're getting on our own."

"No." Shadow stretched out beside Tundra, who summarized the data feeds they were already tapped into to prevent possible duplication. "Cam's not here."

It wasn't the only reason, though Cam was by far the best of them at negotiating the use and repayment of Labyrinth's carefully maintained network of blackmail and favors. More importantly, even though it would be practically impossible for Lab to figure out that they were using his influence to find a specific mech, Shadow had witnessed him doing the impossible often enough to not want him anywhere near Ironhide or anyone else, not until they had no choice.

The others were focused on finding evidence of Palisade and Lastline, leaving Ironhide to her. Shadow stretched and settled more comfortably against her cohort, focused on digging past everything she could find about Autobot forces on the Iacon border, all the way down into everything they didn't want anyone to know.

* * * * *

It was almost a decacyle before Ironhide dared to log into the Velen hub once more - handfuls of rotations he had spent arguing with himself that he shouldn't do so at all, better to bury himself and keep the others out of danger, better to try to forget. He couldn't, though, not with reports streaming in from everywhere for the Prime's optics, and the Prime - newly forged ex-archivist that he was - wasn't nearly as suspicious as he should be. He didn't seem to particularly care if Ironhide had clearance or not, so long as he had another pair of hands to process records and the tactical commentary of a lifelong member of the Guard. Ironhide gave him both, and if he was catching barely a breem of flux ridden recharge each off-shift, plagued by the estimated count of casualties his tactical advice would bring, well... that was a personal matter the Prime wasn't interested in.

In exchange, it bought Ironhide free range of the reports filtering into Autobot Command. Placement, requisitions, supplies, tactical, casualties. The last he always approached with the most caution, because he had been scorched there already and it took bracing of tank and inner systems to scan each report for familiar designations. Too many of them, but the ones he was _really_ looking for had been mercifully absent for the last few skirmishes. 

Absent from the casualty lists, but one familiar designation crossed his view in requisitions, bringing him up short with a quick intake for half a klik before he managed to cover the reaction. The requisition form was filed from an encampment in Polyhex; he noted the coordinates, processed the request with hydraulics clenched tight to avoid shaking, and went on to the next.

It was in his off shift after that when he made arrangements once more for a secured channel, waiting impatiently, spark spinning too fast, for the authorization to go through. He had the game chip waiting and was plugged in and accessing the Velen hub as soon as the channel was approved, paging the in-game chat before he had even opened the guild window to find out who was online. 

[Irohne] Shadow? 

[Anying] About time you showed up. Give me a klik...and check your mail while you wait, you have a present.

Shadow had kept the game queued when she wasn't playing, lowest priority but always active unless she was in recharge, in hopes Ironhide would log back in. Now, relief aching through her, she backed out of the network she'd been having little enough luck with, wiping traces of her presence as she went, and turned her full attention to Ironhide.

[Anying] Cam said to tell you he'll run the stockades as soon as he has time, and Tundra wants to check out that rare spawn, but I think she's trying to talk someone into going with her. You know how she feels about those big things stomping along the Tanaris coast.

The game coordinates where Ironhide's avatar had been when he logged out were sharp in her memory; she ran out of her home inn as soon as the hearthstone spell finished and summoned a flying mount, twin of the one she had sent him, to get back to that spot before he could vanish again. Stupid, when she couldn't do anything to affect him or keep him there, but she needed to see him...even if all she was seeing was a digital representation of a fictional organic species.

[Anying] As for the Shado-pan monastery instance, I'll be there any time you say the word.

Relief flooded through Ironhide - she understood, he had to believe that she did, that Cam would find Lastline and Tundra would locate Palisade, his cohort in the hands of Shadow's and it would be _SAFE_. Anything would be better, he had to hold to that thought, even if they were all as lost and broken as he felt it would still be better if they could find each other, if they could be _together_ instead of waiting for deactivation alone.

[Irohne] Thanks, we appreciate it.

His avatar was a few steps from a mailbox; he opened it and almost laughed aloud at the gift waiting for him. So familiar, and he had barely enough time to take the mail attachment before Shadow's avatar was dropping down beside him on a matching mount. He summoned the mount, leaving their avatars overlapped shoulder to shoulder on their mounts, swaying in unison with the idle movement.

Irohne hugs Anying.  
[Irohne] Heard back from Signal - if yeh've got anybody in the Barrens, she's out there tryin' t' run around Northwatch an' yeh know she can't run solo.

It had been strange at first; the Guard, by default, used the mech pronouns of their founders, but several of the 12th had picked femme avatars and it had become habit to refer to them as such within the game. Another layer of distraction if anyone could see their communications, another layer of however-fragile feeling safety. 

He measured his next words more carefully, layering them under more diffuse meanings. It was hard; he ached, that thin offer of reassurance, of backup, sinking through him, but...

Irohne cuddles up to Anying.  
[Irohne] Ah'd love t' run Shado-pan, but Ah've got that quest chain, protectin' th' Prince. Gettin' a lot of drops from it. Ah'd... really love t' run Shado-pan with yeh, though.

[Anying] ANY time.  
Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
[Anying] I'd like to do it soon, though. We haven't run an instance together in a long time. Shame there's no way for us to sync up our quest chains.

Shadow checked the map she'd created, comparing it to their current assignments. It made it easier, at least for the moment, to feel like she was doing something. Easier as long as Ironhide's avatar was beside hers, assuring her that he was alive and, however temporarily, _safe_.

[Anying] Shouldn't be any trouble getting someone out to the Barrens. Might be a little while, but a couple of us are running around there. Know Signal never could solo anything that wasn't 10 levels below her.

She vented, letting her avatar idle for a klik, aware Ironhide might not have an answer, and that if he did, she might not like it, then ventured

[Anying] Viper's been complaining there's no one to fight with over the new raid gear. And he says you still owe him a rabbit.

Ironhide exvented a long, shaky cycle. Out of Shadow's Thirteen, Viper had been an unexpected one - he and Ironhide had gotten off in the wrong gear from the start, but the argumentative glitch had somehow bonded with the 12th's own argumentative glitch in a match made direct in the spark of Unicron. That was one name he had already run across in the reports, and he could hazard a good guess what the vague listing of 'missing in action' meant.

[Irohne] Ah've been apologizin' for that rabbit since th' start - we get a chance t' run it again, he can have th' damned rabbit.

His avatar was still swaying in time with Shadow's, mounts side by side. Running everything through the filter of game speech was more difficult than he had thought, but a memory of some of the external game mechanics gave him a simpler explanation. 

[Irohne] Tell Viper Ah ain't sure, 'cus Ah ain't heard it direct, but Ah think Cross transferred for th' Horde. 

Not the worst answer, but still not one she liked. One she suspected Viper would like even less; he never had been good at dealing with _no_. Nor was he likely to allow a little thing like the mech behind the avatar being the wrong faction keep him from tracking Crossfire down and making sure he was all right.

His answer kept her from asking about any of the other names that gnawed at her, mecha she had actually played beside and mecha she knew as names and nothing more. _Ironhide_ was all right; Ironhide was in a position to feed them names and locations and, most importantly, he was in a location where she could get to him, plans and backup plans already mapped out. All she needed - and she did need it, even though she understood why he wouldn't do it - was for him to tell her _now_.

Anying cuddles up to Irohne.  
[Anying] If that's true, Viper might wind up chasing her all over Azeroth, the possessive glitch. You hear anything about whether she's on a PvP server now?

Oh, Primus, there was the last thing they needed, though he wasn't sure even the Decepticons were prepared for the type of destructive chaos that came from putting Viper and Crossfire in the same location. Ironhide moved his avatar a step closer, until his image was wrapped around Shadow's back, their mounts overlapping in a strange  mash of forms. 

[Irohne] Might still be on Velen. She's probably just lookin' for a way t' cause a bigger mess an' get away with it. Yeh know how people expect Horde t' be afts an' Cross ain't ever had a good temper.

Or patience. It wasn't any stretch of the imagination at all that if Crossfire's code had taken even half as well as Ironhide's had then the junior munition's tech had quit the Autobots at the first opportunity with an aim to wreck as much havoc and energon as possible from the nearest base that would allow him to do it, namely the Decepticons. No staying put and trying to track down the others, not for Crossfire. 

Ironhide vented harshly. There were still other names he was looking for, other mecha he hadn't located yet, but how much good did it do when more than half of them came to him through the casualty lists? Maybe it would be better to get out - now, while he still had something of his own spark left, before he lost his nerve, or his determination. Retrieve the three that they knew of, before any more names ended up listed as deactivated, or worse. 

Or maybe that was the cowardice speaking, to run from the responsibility of collecting what information he could just because he didn't feel as though _he_ , out of all of them, should be there. He didn't _know_ , he didn't know what the right answer was, and the lack of knowing was part of it.

[Irohne] Ah wanna run Shado-pan, but these drops... Ah don't know if it's worth it t' keep farmin' for 'em.

[Anying] There are other places to farm for drops.  
Anying hugs Irohne.   
[Anying] Our guild has never minded farming for each other, right?

Her answer was pure selfishness, and Shadow knew it. She would never have been able to leave a position where she could find information on her cohort, could never have trusted their safety to other mecha and their promises. But the reality was, she was trained for it. They were all trained for it, and Ironhide wasn't, and Shadow believed - told herself she believed - there was nothing that might come to him by chance which they couldn't ultimately find. 

At least this time there was no unchecked string of action commands, groping desperately for contact, even if that contact was via a poor simulation. No pained, tank churning pauses as he dredged glyphs into the open, either, perhaps because they had the shared language of the game to buffer what they were saying, even if the meanings were clear between them. It made the conversation easier, but Shadow didn't believe that meant any of it was better, not with the very function Ironhide had been sparked for declared obsolete and worthless, his cohort torn apart and scattered like so much scrap.

He didn't need to be doing their job for them. He needed - they all needed - to not be alone.

[Anying] I think we should run Shado-pan soon. Running instances with the others just isn't the same as pulling your furry aft out of trouble.

[Irohne] Yeh've been pullin' mah aft outta trouble since th' start.  
Irohne hugs Anying.

True, within the game, but never truer than right then with his cohort's literal lives held in her cohort's hands. It wasn't as frightening as he would have thought - it felt a little like a joined mission, another Guard squad that they might only know as designations and the shared history of their functions but whom they could trust implicitely at their backs. 

That realization gave him strength, something familiar and reassuring to lean on when his own spark was faltering. Drawing in an easier ventilation, Ironhide took several captures of the image of their avatars cuddled up, filing them in his easy access files.

[Irohne] Think Ah need to keep farmin' this for awhile, see if Ah can get that matched heirloom set. Duty shift's tyin' up most've mah time. Ah'll come talk to yeh when Ah can.

Logging off was harder than logging on, but it was best to keep the channel open as little as possible.

[Irohne] Play it safe, yeah? Don't go tryin' t' take down any 90 elites without meh.  
Irohne loves Anying.   
Irohne has logged off.

Ironhide shuttered his optics and pulled the game chip free. He still had time left in the secure channel he had arranged. Time enough to do some farming.


	2. Shado-Pan - Out of the Monastery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was just over half a decacyle before the next name came across Ironhide's flags - not all news is good news, and everyone has a breaking point.

It was just over half a decacyle before the next name came across his flags. A miserable double handful of shift rotations - Ironhide hadn't recharged in nearly five, surface level defrag running in a constant background loop that tied up his processor threads and left him feeling sluggish, response time shot.  

It was still better than recharge, or the system fluxes that accompanied it.

The entire command staff knew there was a storm brewing and were staying well out of range between himself and the Prime. That mechanism himself had nothing to say, his optics passing over Ironhide as though the frontliner weren't there, plates unruffled and field a careful construct of smoothness. Ironhide, in turn, had nothing to say to _him_ and kept his head down, his own field clamped tight to his plates, and did his Pit slagging work in silence.

None of which stopped the repeating memory file of the sound of tearing plates and screams, or the visual replay of that same Prime - so-called chosen of Primus - methodically extinguishing sparks on the battlefield. Ironhide tasted rust and ash in his intakes and clamped down further, trying to make the lists and forms in front of him his only reality rather than listen to the nightmare sickness in his own spark.

The name came to him five days after the battle - the frigid silence between himself and his 'oath' given charge still unbroken - on the deactivation lists. A minor victory on the Vosian border but the Autobots had suffered losses to hold the intercity pass, one of which...

Ironhide only knew he had stopped when the _crack_ of a datapad screen popped loudly through the command center, stilling the noise around them. He stared numbly at the pad in his hand, spiderweb cracks glazing the crystal screen around his own thumb.

"Is there a problem, Ironhide?" The Prime's voice, deep and sonorous, edged with the sharpness of irritation. Ironhide bit back every glyph that sprang to mind, rebooting his vocalizer, and if he was gruffer than normal it just made him sound angry.

"No, there ain't no problem."

He held it together. He wasn't sure how, didn't remember filing the last reports and turning over his duty station, but he held it together to shift's end. He didn't remember anything until he was in his own quarters, vents cycling too quickly, frame taut all over and aching with a tension he couldn't give voice. It broke through him in microns, a tremor here, a sharp pain there, passing through his frame one circuit at a time.

No. _NO._

He barely forced himself through the motions of securing a channel, only familiarity giving him the tools to do so. His hands were shaking as he plugged the game chip in, his glyphs so scrambled that it took him three tries to log in, glyphs pouring into the joint guild comm before he could even remember where he had left his avatar. 

[Irohne] Anying Anying Anying Shado-pan please please Anying please

Shadow was already calculating the fastest way to get to Cybertron before she answered, pinging the others on base with _emergency extraction_ , the glyphs they had started using for guild business appended. There were six of them on base with her now, none of whom had reported their return to Labyrinth, in case they were needed. Viper had returned and immediately left with Tundra, and Cam had sent a message that the Stockades were less easy on Heroic but he'd be done soon. It had been enough to make her hope she'd have good news for Ironhide the next time he checked in.

But this wasn't the time for news, even good news, not when he was bleeding such desperation across the guild channel that she could feel it in spite of the game's limitations.

[Anying] I'll be there. It might take a little while, I'm not in Pandaria and I'm not near a portal, but I'm on my way. I'll be there, soon as I can, I promise.

Answers were coming in from the others, offers of assistance, wordless requests for more information, all of them as ready to act as they would be if one of their own were in trouble. Shadow fielded the comms absently, most of her attention on Ironhide, as if pure will on her part could protect him.

Anying loves Irohne.  
Anying loves Irohne.   
Anying loves Irohne.

Her ship had been ready to leave at an instant's notice since the first time Ironhide had gotten back in contact with her. She sent Hadron to warm up the engines and asked Hardwire to add a few emergency supplies.

[Anying] I know where Shado-pan is, but can you give me the coordinates of the meeting stone? It'll be faster if I can head straight to you. I always hate stumbling over mobs when I'm trying to find an entrance.

Ironhide had never been very conversant in most of the action and emote glyphs in the game, outside of the less than a handful that he used routinely. This, it turned out, was a good thing - it meant his avatar was not _actually_ on its knees in supplication, begging, though he had some vague recollection of that being one of the preprogrammed actions. Even though his actual frame _was_ on his knees with no recollection of how he had gotten there, curled tight over his chassis as though his thick dorsal plating could protect him from the pain that was already sunk deep into his spark.

He couldn't focus on the game mechanics, on the overlaid maps or terminology, could only parse fragments of 'not now' and 'soon'. He cut his vocalizer - quarters were cramped, sound carried, and he couldn't afford the keen that wanted to swell up through his systems. It took effort to focus on the game immersion, to try to keep himself there when his processor was fragmenting into too many pieces, shards falling out of his grasp. Shadow was asking something, for a place, a meeting place.

[Irohne] Shado-pan. It- Ah- 6A8.0-

Those were real coordinates and he cut himself off sharply, hissing. Ironhide vented, hard, and pulled his thought threads together, forcing the game map they had been using to take the forefront. 

[Irohne] Sorry. 24.8, 52.3. It's... close t' th' Horde line.

Everything in him was still thrumming with need, desperate and clawing, a need to _ESCAPE_. 

Irohne loves Anying.  
Irohne cuddles up to Anying.

[Irohne] How long yeh think?

The precise location he gave her didn't change her approach vectors much - couldn't, really, as she had carefully calculated every approach sensor-blind enough for a small, cloaked vessel to slip through, every automated checkpoint with known codes or exploitable weaknesses, patrol schedules and supply transport routes - and all Ironhide's coordinates did was adjust the odds of who might be shooting at her if she slipped up before she landed. 

[Anying] Go ahead and run Tol Barad. You'll probably have time to kill a few extra spiders, but I doubt you'll be able to get through Stormwind or Dalaran before I'm there. 

It was a rough estimate, at best, but it was the safest timeframe she could give him, and she wouldn't be able to risk updating him from her ship. Other names on the guild roster were lighting up, though, her cohortmates logging in to give Ironhide the reassurance of their presence, at the least, and a secure way to relay messages to her, if things on his end went bearings-up.

[Anying] I can't talk and fly at the same time; I don't need to dip too close to a horde camp and get shot off my griffin by archers again. The others can keep you company if you get bored running dailies, though.  
Anying hugs Irohne.  
Anying loves Irohne.  
[Anying] I'll be there soon. Just make sure you're ready to add another achievement to the stack you've collected.

Time... It took Ironhide long moments to parse Shadow's cryptic words as a span of time. One and a half or two breems, tops - they had always run Tol Barad questing with an excess of pausing to kill and skin for raw materials. 

He couldn't focus, couldn't run the calculations needed. Shadow had given him the answer to that too, however - there were other names lit up on the guild roster, others of her cohort online and within reach of nothing but a quick comm page in-game.

[Irohne] Phase? Could yeh run Tol Barad with meh?

He could _feel_ the femme's nanoklik of surprise - a silent thing that felt like 'what... really?' but she agreed readily enough, her avatar joining him one hearthstone and a portal later.

Irohne hugs Phaseshift.  
[Irohne] Yeh lead, Ah'll follow.

It was easier after that, his avatar linked to follow hers and going through the actual motions of the quests in the game. It tied up several thought threads and a portion of his HUD, curbing the frantic impulses rattling through him. Too many free threads dissolved into pain and chaos, too much chance to _think._ Occupying them gave him just enough left to dredge up some form of focus and plan.

The coordinates he had given her were on the edge of their patrol routes, one of the more dangerous blackout areas between watch posts. Ironhide flagged the duty roster, checked who was on that route and inserted his own tag to it as well. Another quick comm flagged his secure connection as a continued work related records query for the next two breems.

His avatar and Phaseshift's were plowing their way through the first quest of the area. Ironhide half watched the game display, trying to find a calm point for the fluctuations of his spark. There was very little in his quarters other than tools, no personal effects left that he didn't carry on him. He scooped the more important tools up, the ones that were _his_ and not the property of the Autobots, sliding them into his subspace. 

It felt a little like freefall to step outside of his quarters and head for the border checks.

Even during third shift the encampment was never completely still. There were duty mecha sitting shifts, and one of them stopped him on his way past the perimeter, a younger mech recently released from his weapons classes who looked uncomfortable having to address him. "Sir? Isn't it your downshift?"

"Can't recharge," Ironhide growled, the roughness in his vocalizer a good approximation of his normal aggravated tone. "Got a couple breems of filing left t' do, figured Ah'd go run th' bumpers off some of th' patrols in th' meantime - third shift's too fraggin' slow."

The expression on face and field of the younger mech was priceless - better the patrols than him -  as he hastily snapped a salute. "Yes sir! Good hunting, sir."

Ironhide spared him a token of a salute before dropping to his wheels, and then he was outside of the encampment proper and on the rubble strewn road that lead north-east, through the deserted area that defined the limit between Autobot and Decepticon lines. On his HUD, Phaseshift and he were heading for the third quest of the Tol Barad area in-game. Ironhide shifted into a gear, the sound a strained whine through equally strained systems, and drove without a second glance back.

* * * * *

It was a relief to get near enough to Cybertron that Shadow could cut her main drive and switch to maneuvering thrusters, if only because it gave her things to do other than worry. About whether Ironhide would be there; about what had triggered the desperate plea to get him _out_.

About whether waiting had been a mistake, just like not digging deeper had been.

But she couldn't think about that  when she was tapped into her ship, using its sensors to feel her way along the edges of active-scan security beacons, calculating vector and momentum so she could cut thrusters and drift past passive sensors rather than risk a power fluctuation slipping past her ship's cloaking device. It was a delicate balancing act, caution against time; she wouldn't cut corners, wouldn't risk failing him through a slip on her part, but she remembered their daily runs distinctly, could average their time based on any combination of quests. She had promised to be there for him; she had always been there for him in the game, and she wasn't going to fail him now that it mattered.

_Primus, let him be waiting._

The coordinates Ironhide had given her were in a dead zone at the moment, though the area was scarred with evidence that the lines drawn on either side had been pushed back and forth more than once. It had been long enough since the last skirmish that the scavengers had finished with the area and moved on, her sensor scans as she approached picking up nothing but rubble and inert metal. 

She exvented as her ship settled onto a roughly-flat area and deliberately checked her chronometer, her dread firewalled to a distant corner of her awareness. The trip had felt endless, but she was actually a little early...and it was, she reminded herself, far far safer for her to wait in a cloaked ship than for an Autobot to be out in the open this close to the Decepticon lines. Which didn't make the silence any more reassuring, and she reconnected to her ship's systems, using its more extensive sensor suite to observe the area.

They were still within the timeframe for Tol Barad, if they were busy farming spiders or dealing with the farther flung quests. Ironhide had not sent an emergency message through the others. He was not late, or missing, even if each klik that crept by pressed against her emotional firewalls like a knife slipping into her frame, numbed by neural blocks but still _there_.

Her ship picked up sonic disruption, movement, resolved them into the sound of an engine and a heavy ground frame. A single frame, a single red frame, moving from the direction of the Autobot lines _at speed_ , and it was an effort to disconnect properly from her ship's systems before she bolted for the airlock. Her ship was shielded against sensors, not optical detection; he would see it before he saw her. He wouldn't recognize it, or her; she needed to be out there, to talk to him, so she could get him under her protection where he belonged.

The newcomer had stopped at a wary distance, still in alt mode, engine snarling as if he was tempted to go back the way he'd come. Shadow wanted to hit the ground on wheels, but some last vestige of caution stopped her; getting shot by someone spooked at being so close to the Con lines wouldn't help, and if that wasnt' Ironhide, she wanted to be able to salvage the situation.

She walked out into the open, frame tight with the ache to transform, and opened a channel they had used, once or twice, to communicate outside of the limitations of the game interface. _::Irohne? I'm ready to run Shado-pan.::_

It was another long portion of a klik before Ironhide could put visual feed and comm channel into a coherent thread. Black scout class grounder frame, yellow optics, no weapons trained on him... he ran the comm signal again, then transformed to his pedes. 

It felt strange, but no stranger than dozens of off-world salutations he could think of. Optics never straying from the femme, he pressed the knuckles of one fist into the palm of the other, bowing from the waist, and saw the recognition brighten her optics before he had finished the gesture. _::Anying?::_

Neither of them held position, the lurch forward instinctual, and then... Primus bless, it had been orn but it felt like vorn, the shock of a living _welcoming_ field against his own after nothing but empty professional touches and distant fields that felt _wrongWrongWRONG_ almost dropping him to his knees. There was a gear dropped grinding noise somewhere in his systems, his vocalizer uselessly swamped in static, but she was _there_ , real and solid and almost exactly the same height to him in the mesh as her avatar was to his own. Ironhide clung to her, desperate for that reality, gratitude and amazement and love bleeding in a  jagged mix through his field.

Shadow could have stayed like that, frames pressed together, her own field trying to mesh with and ease the jagged jumble of his, if her training hadn't taken over. A deft twist out of his hold, and the arm she still had wrapped around him became a guide, tugging him toward the ship.

"It's okay, Hide, I'm here, I've got you, you're _safe_ , I'm taking you..." _Home_ locked in her vocalizer, because a base full of well-meaning strangers was not home, and in his position she probably would have shot anyone who suggested otherwise. "I'm getting you out of here. Are you  hurt?" 

The question was route; he was hurting, but there wasn't any indication of physical damage. She pressed herself against him again while the airlock cycled, the touch of metal and field gentling her brisk tone. "Once we break atmo, you can have whatever you need. For now, strap yourself in, we've got to move."

It was harder to focus, with his field bleeding pain and need just out of her reach. Hard but necessary; the longer the war ground on, the dimmer the Autobot view of mecha who left their duty stations and attempted to flee offworld. Shadow pushed down the need to hold, to comfort, and concentrated on not leaving any traces as her ship twisted carefully around sub-orbital sensors and out of the atmosphere.

"Okay," she said finally, most of her attention still focused outside of the ship. "I'm going to have my hands full until we're past the orbital sensor relays, but there's no reason you shouldn't make yourself comfortable. There's energon, there's med kits, and I'm pretty sure Hadron threw in enough high grade to knock out a gestalt."

It didn't seem real - that she was there, that she had a ship, that they were even now lifting out of gravity. Ironhide's systems were lurching, too much too fast, a billion second guesses - he should have stayed, he should go back, someone had to keep looking, he was going to break. It took entirely too long just to process _words_ , to make sense of her offer and check all of it off as things he didn't need. 

The feel of a ship's engine, even as small a ship as Shadowrunner's, was soothing in a way the gravity mass of their native planet had never been. Ironhide concentrated on the physical feel for long moments, learning the vibration of the engine, letting the lesser tug of artificial gravity unfold some of the tension in his plates and trying to let the simple physical relief ease some of the storm in his spark.

Shadow was there, right _there_ , but it felt unreal and finally Ironhide unclipped the inertia straps with shaking hands, sliding from the auxillary seat. Spaces that were fine for Shadow's frame were more cramped for him, but he eased to one knee, then the other, pulling plates in against his frame to fit into the space, until he was resting on the floor beside her. He didn't want to foul her hands or her concentration, unfamiliar with her ship controls, but he tentatively pressed his helm to the side of her knee and... there. Real plating, an actual living field. Not imagined, not virtual. _Real_. 

Ironhide cut the garbled sound in his vocalizer, curling down and into himself, pressed against the side of the pilot's seat and that one fragile point of contact with Shadow's frame. "Sorry," he managed, the glyph half Basic, clicked where he couldn't push his vocalizer into the proper sequence. "Tell meh... if Ah'm in th' way. Don't wanna..."

_Infringe. Beg. Ask too much. Ask more. Assume._ Dozens of things and he couldn't voice any of them, systems shuddering with the white-hot mix of pain and relief that came in the wake of rescue, of going from solo to backup, disbelieving and breaking all at once. It was crashing over him with every nanoklik further from the planet surface they went, all of the things he couldn't _let_ himself feel while carrying out duties and training and being precisely what he had been ordered to be. _hopeless-despair-grief-loss-rage-fury-betrayal-fear-GRIEF_

Like taking a neural block off of an injury, the pain swamping his systems and throwing nothing but errors and static streaked starbursts through his processor. Ironhide whined softly, the sound choked in his engine, and shuttered his optics, leaning into that one bit of solid reality that Shadow offered.

"You're fine. You're fine." Shadow had never liked assuming full control of a ship; borrowing the sensors was a useful temporary enhancement, but the feel of unfamiliar engines and control surfaces never settled comfortably in her processor. The distraction of it made her reactions slower than they were with tangible controls under her hands, but there should be nothing ahead of them requiring speed or precision, just the same circuitous crawl out that she had made in.

She tapped in the rest of the way, processor split between where they were going and the frame pressed trembling against hers. Pain and anger, trapped fear, all coming off him in jagged-edged bursts, but he had put himself willingly in range and she dropped her hands to stroke the curves and planes of his helm. _Comfort-safety-backup_ , in both her field and her touch, _love_ and _welcome_ a steady undercurrent beneath. 

_Cohort_ , for all they had never met in the mesh, for all that Ironhide probably wouldn't understand; the Lucky Thirteen didn't accept outsiders, didn't have friends, but the other half of their guild had become friends and more over the breems shared in a virtual world. She held that back, respecting his grief, and instead curled as much of her frame over his as she could, trying to offer a tangible sense of safety.

"I've got you." The words were as much for her as for him, something loosening from around her spark now that she could finally curl around and protect him. "I'm right here, I'm not going anywhere, I'm not letting you go. You're safe." Love pulsed through her field. "You're safe, Ironhide. I've got you."

The words and touch were familiar, for all that they had nothing between them in the mesh. That Shadow was all but a stranger meant nothing - the virtual lives and world that stretched between them felt nearly the same as meeting a Guard kin in the mesh for the first time with distant other lifetimes of history to draw upon that bound them all together. It could have been Livewire or Nitro curled around Ironhide's back, could have been the lightweight press of their frames against his, reassurances whispered in glyph and field, kin and cohort and safety.

It broke what little walls he could manage to piece together, until the keen was vibrating in sharp edged discordant aches through his chassis and it was all he could do to curl in, down, try to make himself smaller and easier for the scout frame pressed to him to cover vulnerable points when his protocols were down. His vents were torn, ragged and gasping, systems misfiring in cascades that made him shake, the pain so sharp and hot that his displays were whiting out. Words were lost in static, corrupted before he could even formulate them, all the world narrowed down to pain and the comfort that stayed with him where Shadow let him cling to her.

It hurt to hear him, to know that this was all she could do, offer him support and the promise of safety while he shook with reaction to the past orn. She kept talking to him, the sound of her voice and the pressure of frame and field tangible things he could focus on, even if he wasn't hearing her words.

_Safe,_ she promised. _Safe-protected-not alone-never alone-safe-protected-loved._

They finally moved beyond the outermost ring of orbital sensors, allowing Shadow to release the ship to the control of the autopilot and turn her full focus to Ironhide. For a long time, she still didn't move, except to tuck herself more securely over him, the press of her frame helping to still the tremors running through his. 

They stayed like that until the raw pain spilling from his vocalizer and whining in an agonizing pitch from distressed systems quieted somewhat, until she thought he might be able to hear her words as something more than comforting sounds. "Ironhide," she said, and felt a little hitch in his systems that might be an attempt to respond to his name, "you don't have to move if you don't want to, you're fine just where you are, but if you can get your pedes under you we can go somewhere you might be more comfortable. Both of us," she added, because she didn't know him enough to read him, but he was pressed to her like she was the only solid thing in the universe, and she knew sometimes, the threat of losing physical contact was enough to break you. "I'm not going to leave you, I'm not going to let go of you, we're just going to move a little ways. When you're ready." She pressed herself a little more solidly against him. "Nothing happens until you're ready."

She had to repeat it again, slowly and steadily, before Ironhide managed to click an acknowledgement. It took a little longer before he finally moved, one shift at a time, unlocking joints and plates to fumble his way to his pedes.

He clung to her as they moved - had to, optics offlined and shuttered tight, extra sensory input too much to handle amidst all the rest. True to her word, Shadow didn't let go and after the first few fumbling steps Ironhide leaned into her more easily, letting her guide him where she wanted and dropping down again when she pressed. 

It was a little awkward and he finally had to bring his optics to half power to fit himself where she wanted. Not a storage compartment - no one lined a storage area with berth padding. But whatever it was, it was just large enough to fit the both of them, Shadow's frame pressed to his, with a padded but solid ship wall to his back and another against hers; _safe_ , contained, pressing in against him in ways that could have been claustrophobic but were reassuring instead. It echoed back the thrum of Shadow's engine and field, made one feel like more, pressing around him until a little of the aching tightness of his systems could ease.

It didn't ease the pain - he wasn't sure anything could - but it eased the fear and gave him back a measure of control. Ironhide shifted just enough to turn his face into the hand Shadow had pressed to the side of his helm, registering the feel of EM and living system heat against his faceplate. "Should've stayed," he managed at last, the sound ground crystal and shredded steel in his vocalizer. "Couldn't. Sorry."

"You stayed as long as you could." Shadow pressed her helm against his, wrapping comfort and reassurance and _job well done_ around him. "You did everything anyone could have asked, and you got yourself out, and getting _you_ out in one piece is as important as anything else you could have done."

Later, she could give him details, the patterns they'd found in how Guard records were hidden, tricks that would make it easier for them to track down the mecha they didn't have locations for. Now, the most important thing - the only important thing - was for Ironhide to believe that he'd made the right choices, in digging for intel and in calling for backup when he needed it.

"We've got this, Hide. If you can believe anything right now, believe that. You aren't alone in this; backup's here, and we'll take care of everything. You and your squad are top priority." Her thumb stroked across the mesh of his cheek, her glyphs shifting from general reassurance to more personal. "Whatever you think you should have done, let go. It's our job, now.  Your only job is to let us take care of you." She nuzzled against him, brushing a light kiss against his helm. "I've always had your back in-game; I have it now, too. I won't let any of you down. You know that."

_Let go._ Simple words, uttered from the whole to the broken and Ironhide _knew_ he was broken. To be not alone, to have the safety and familiarity of support at his back - it lifted the weight from him that had been crushing him for orn. He buried his faceplates against Shadow's chassis, could hear the metal on metal shudders of his own frame and the ragged sound of his vents, but it was distant and immaterial against the reality of touch and the safety of another EM threaded through his own.

The pain and the grief were still there, clawing at him, but he could drag in a broken invent and somehow, impossibly, his spark kept spinning. He burrowed against her, clung to her, little clicks and chirps of broken sound stuttering through and around words that spilled out like knives, the last burning shot that had broken him and sent him running. "Flashburn... found 'im. Yeh didn't know... he's our youngest, last newspark... bitlet only just had his name, never had th' time t' train 'im up all th' way... Just a bitlet... Primus, they put 'im on th' front line against _Vos_. 'Cus he's a flier. 'Cus he had _wings_ , just a youngling with wings, an' they put him up against th' Air Command." The keen vibrating through his chassis grew, drowning out the words, tight and miserable. "He was our _last_."

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, love." The space was too small and the difference in their frames too great; Shadow couldn't tuck him close the way she would have one of her own cohort. Instead, her field pulsed with shared grief, mourning a mech she had never known, the shape of his loss carved into one she did. Lost cohort and lost future, thrown away like the Guard itself, and beyond the grief and horror she shared with Ironhide, there was a simmering anger which she kept carefully shielded away. 

There was nothing she could say that would make any of it better; any promises, any reassurances, would be empty, worthless things, in the face of what had been done, what had been taken from him. They would find the ones who were left, save as many as they could - and Primus, she had no idea of how many they'd lost, only the tiny handful of names Ironhide had mentioned - but none of it could make up for what had already happened.

"I'm sorry." She whispered it against his plates, against his field, _grief-love-support-safety-love_. "Know that doesn't fix it, know I can't fix it, but I'm sorry, and I'm here. I've got you, Hide; let go. It's safe to let go."

He was broken and shattered, nothing but grating jagged pieces inside, a neverending horror since they had been recalled and even before, a sickness that had sunk into all of their masses when the mandate had come down cutting them off from the Well. Her words pressed and repeated, making it safe - _allowable_ \- to let the pieces go, dropping them entirely. 

Ironhide choked, vents tripping in the wrong sequence, and let all of the pieces fall.

The machine whine keen of grief battered at his frame from the inside out, field sunk thick and sickly into the morass of _loss-pain-despair-anger_. He couldn't even begin to grieve properly, couldn't unarchive one set of memories without triggering them all and sheer self defense flinched away from the scope of that. Without focus, conclusion, or structured outlet the feelings rolled through him unchecked, wave after wave that he could only give voice to in insensate sound.

He didn't have any feel for how long it lasted, only that Shadow _stayed_ , her touch and her voice grounding him when he was past the point of being able to deal with the errors thrown by overheated and exhausted systems. Finally quieted by fatigue, systems unable to sustain the level of misfire his spark would have pushed on them, Ironhide leaned his helm against hers, clicking base code gratitude. _::This-one is thankful-loves that-one.::_

Ironhide didn't calm so much as exhaust himself, the tremors wracking his frame reduced to shuddering twitches, the static-shot sounds of pain faded until the ragged sounds of his vents were all that was left. He had pulled in on himself, a tight, shaking ball that was only starting to uncurl when he finally spoke.

It wasn't the first time one of them had been reduced to the most basic levels of communication, and Shadow chirred a comforting note as she reached up, cupping his helm and pulling it more solidly against hers. She answered in kind, not sure he was ready to process anything more complex. _::This-one loves-protects that-one.::_

Drained as he was, there was still tension vibrating through him, and a sick, exhausted misery in his field. She suspected he needed to fuel and recharge, from the way his systems had been ramped up and burning hot, but the one required more movement than she thought he was capable of, and the other...if he hadn't cycled down into recharge on his own, it was likely to be the hardest thing for him to do.

Still, she offered, carefully spacing the queries so he'd have time to process one before being hit with the next. _::Fuel need-desire?::_ She leaned her mass reassuringly against him. _::Recharge need-desire? This-one guards-protects.::_

Ironhide cycled his optics twice, going slowly over the sound sets to parse meaning from them. His processes were off, lagging horrifically, but he couldn't pull them back into alignment again. _::Recharge,::_ he whistled at last, but the idea sent shivers through his plates. He ducked his head against her, the clicks of Basic short and sharp. _::Recharge bad-wrong-hurt. Errors.::_

The things in his fluxes were too ugly to be shared but he pinged her a static fuzzed shot of the errors his defrag was perpetually scrolling across his internal display. Fuel... fuel would help, at least in the short term, but Ironhide couldn't even process the sequence of autonomic commands needed in order to begin to move himself back into an upright position. He shook his helm instead, tucking down against her, letting field and feel ease the shivers. _::Need-desire stay?::_

_::Stay,::_ Shadow promised. _::Stay-always, not-leave.::_

It would have been easier if his aversion to recharge had been external; eventually, exhaustion and the steady demonstration of protection would have cycled him down. Dreading the act itself was worse, and Shadow leaned her helm against his, as if she could repair the errors through simple proximity.  She would offer to see if she could help with the errors, but later, when she could be sure he understood and could consider the offer.

For now, she gave him the simple comfort of contact, tactile reassurance she was there, using herself to create a shield for the vulnerable areas of neck and helm and spark. Her engine dropped to a lower gear, slowing, a stabilizing counterpoint against the still-erratic vibrations of his systems. _::This-one stays,::_ she repeated, the hand that was not spread protectively over the back of his helm rubbing gently over his sporadically twitching plates. _::This-one protects-guards-loves. Priority safety-wellbeing.::_

_::Priority safety,::_ Ironhide echoed, ending in the click of an affirmation. _::This-one grateful. This-one loves.::_

Even the most fundamental concept sounds were tiring. Recharge wasn't going to be optional much longer, systems too worn out for too long to keep running without at least a partial shutdown. Ironhide pressed close, audial tucked against her chassis where the slow, steady thrum of her engine was soothing. 

His protocols were already offline, dropped and fumbled in their entirety while he broke. He mustered what processor threads he could, setting locks in place on weapons and hard alerts that would - hopefully - override even exhausted systems if his autonomics tried to respond to memory fluxes. Going over the processes forced him into an upper gear of thought threads and he finally rebooted his vocalizer, switching back into full glyphs. "Don't... don't let meh hurt yeh. Ah cycle down, start fluxin' - just get outta th' way."

"I won't let you hurt me," Shadow promised, "but I'm not leaving you, either. You aren't dealing with things alone anymore, not even the things stuck in your own processor." She stroked his helm, gently teasing. "It's tough to get away from your shadow."

It was a joke, but it was also true. She wasn't sure she'd be able to leave him if his request was genuine and not just concern for her safety; she couldn't have left one of her cohort with their systems run ragged and their field bleeding pain and damage, and the impulse to stay close, to comfort and support and protect, was no less strong simply because Ironhide hadn't lived and trained with her.

"Go ahead and let yourself cycle down, Hide," she said more seriously, love and reassurance in her field. "I know it's hard, but you're safe, and you're not alone. I'll be right here when it's over."

Ironhide shuttered his optics and let his field pulse _love_ at her - simple, sparkfelt emotion, too exhausted for more. He should try to convince her to move away but that hurt almost as much as the fear of recharge, looming like a spector at the edges of his processor, did. 

She was a practical femme, capable of taking care of herself. He'd never been entirely sure what her cohort _did_ , but he knew training and even just in a virtual world that group training had shown through when he had seen them in combat. He consoled himself with that - she wouldn't let him hurt her, could probably, at that point, have taken him down without half trying - and the warmth of her mass and the press of field and frame were soothing. He could lean there, letting himself rest, whether he recharged or not.

He had just about convinced himself that was enough, his own systems easing into a steadier thrum that matched hers, when the first stage of recharge snuck up on him. It came in fits and starts, small gaps in his chronometer that always jerked him back awake when he noticed them, vents stuttering, plates clamping tight. And Shadow was there, every time, warmth and weight and the hum of another living system, easing him back down where the ringing silence of his solitary quarters had only ever made it worse. It soothed him bit by bit into deeper levels, systems greedy for the downtime they had been denied, until the endless smaller twitches eased, restless motions smoothing, the strained whine of his engine finally falling into a deeper purr.

Shadow didn't let her attention split until she was certain Ironhide was in recharge, the worst of the twitches and stutters in his systems smoothed out to something approaching peaceful. Her hands continued to rub soothing circles over his plates while she opened a secure comm channel to Hadron, checking in to let him know that her ship's switch to emergency autopilot was due to a successful mission, not a disastrous failure.

_//We aren't picking up any chatter or unusual activity; looks like no one even knows you were there. Want me to override, bring you straight back?//_

_//I think he can use the downtime. How are the others?//_

_//Cam says the Stockades are a pain in the aft, but the heroic achievement was worth it. Got a drop he'll be showing off after he unwinds with his new racing sim.//_

Shadow shuttered her optics in relief. Good news from one front, at least. _//Tundra?//_

_//Complaining that Viper keeps aggroing things that don't need to be aggroed, and she can't tame  the rare spawn once it's fragged off.//_

Which meant Viper was being his usual charming self at their objective, and Palisade was having none of it. Hopefully, Tundra would be able to smooth things over; Shadow didn't know Palisade well, even within the confines of the game, but he had never struck her as particularly unreasonable.

_//Tell her she knew what worgen are like before she ...I've got to go.//_

A shuddering jolt had run through Ironhide's frame, some internal system whining discordantly until it dropped back into alignment, and he had half shoved her away before convulsively pulling her close again. Shadow dropped the comm and listened for any sign of weapons coming online...not that she would have left him, even at that...and tucked herself back around him.

"Easy, easy. I'm right here." He raised his head, optics open in a blank stare that wavered at half power for a klik before going dark again. "I'm right here, you're safe, cycle back down, it's fine."

She pulled him, unresisting, back against her. Hands and voice and field caressed him, the gentle reassurances not stopping even when his plates stopped twitching and his ventilations evened out.


	3. How to Save a Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Good news and bad news as the roller coaster in the wake of retrieval continues.

Ironhide came out of recharge with a lurch and for one sickening moment he couldn't identify time or place, systems misfiring in a rush of panic.

"Shh, easy, you're safe." Unfamiliar-but-familiar voice and with another lurch the memories and time stamps filtered into place - Shadowrunner, still there, still pressed to him, touch and field and whispered words that he had the vague sensation of hearing through his recharge. Ironhide cycled a vent and let himself sink back against her gratefully. 

His systems were reading a confused mess of errors alongside better levels than he had seen in a decacycle. Actual recharge, he realized belatedly, and a defrag cycle without one of the crippling memory fluxes that had made him give up on the idea entirely. It was no great guess as to why or how. He turned his head, nuzzling gently against the femme's helm where it rested by his own. "Thank yeh."

"Couldn't have done anything else." Shadow stroked his helm gently. "Feeling better?"

She could tell he was functioning more smoothly, the hitches and audible misfires and misalignments mostly gone, and his field was  no longer bleeding exhausted despair or sick horror. Which was reassuring but of little actual use, because frame, processor, and spark did not always function in agreement.

"I have fuel, if you're feeling up to it," she offered. "And good news, if you're feeling up to that."  

The second lurch in Ironhide's spark was lighter than the first, an incredulous surge of hope. Not just 'news' but _good_ news and the hopeful eagerness bled through his field, brightening optics and glyphs. "Yes, please," he said eagerly. "Both."

He opted for fuel first - good news could and should be savored, and he'd had far too precious little of it in too long. The space they were in, he found, opened with a hatch at Shadow's back, letting her climb out first and then offer him a hand in unfolding himself. He stretched, flexing routine joint checks, and took the cube of energon she handed him. "News?" he asked eagerly, leaning in against her.

It was good to feel the lightening of his field and hear enthusiasm in his voice. "Cam checked in," Shadow said, leading Ironhide to what was, technically, another storeroom, but the sturdy crates stacked against the wall could be arranged into a more comfortable seat than the ones in control. She unfastened the webbing that secured them and started doing just that as she added, "He has Lastline, they're safe, we'll be picking them up at one of our alternate bases. Probably because Cam hates too many of us heading home at the same time."

Or because Cam was afraid he'd tripped over something and wanted to lie low for a while, or Lastline was as broken as Ironhide, in which case it was even odds whether he was being protected from the rest of them, or they were being protected from him.

Those were not possibilities she was volunteering without cause, however. "Tundra also checked in. She's made contact with Palisade, but she has Viper with her, and, well, _Viper_." Another crate thumped to the deck plating and was shoved into position. "Tundra will sort it out. No one can resist her for long."

Ironhide hastily finished the fuel in his hands and helped Shadow shove the next crate into place. There was, he realized dimly, a critical thought process that wasn't processing - something stuck, hung in a loop that left him cycling his systems uselessly, moving where needed with nothing comprehensible happening in his processor until the crates had been assembled into a rough seat and Shadow tugged him down onto it to sit beside her. 

"'Hide?" she sounded a little worried. She probably had reason to, he reflected. He probably would have been in her place. 

Her hand was at the back of his helm again, a reassuring pressure that he could lean into, bending to tip his own helm against hers. "They're okay?" he asked at last, voice rough. "Lastline, Palisade - yeh found 'em? They're okay?"

"They're okay," Shadow assured him, leaning against him with a pulse of reassurance. "We'll have Palisade out soon, and then we'll regroup and go after Signal." She hesitated, not wanting to trigger that unwarranted guilt and failure again. "Once we know you four are safe, we can start digging after the others, bring them in, too. There are only so many ways to cover a data trail."

Which was not to say the Primacy hadn't worked hard to cover this one, hiding anything that might conflict with the official view of reality. Bad for the war effort if people knew their interstellar borders had been left bare because the Autobot ranks were desperate for frames. Worse if they ever found out the new influx of troops was splintering off into the Decepticon ranks, or dying in obscene numbers. Worst, at least from the point of view of those in charge, for anyone to put enough pieces together to see their short-sighted incompetence in action.

Or maybe the worst thing for them was that Labyrinth had taught the Lucky Thirteen to turn other mechanisms' incompetence to their own advantage, and instilled them with no outside loyalties to _keep_ them from doing so.

Loyalty to their own, though...that was different.

"One thing in our favor, they have a lot of trails they're trying to cover. They'll default to a pattern, and once we know the pattern, they won't be able to keep anything from us. We've got this, Hide; it may take a little time, but we've got this." She stroked her hand down the back of his helm, and hugged him close. There was still tension in his frame, little stutters and twitches that hadn't completely vanished. "How are you feeling? 

It took Ironhide a klik to answer and in the end there wasn't any answer to her specific question. There weren't any of the right glyphs that he could find or give voice to from the whirlwind inside of him. Just three names to cling to, like glimpses of the Matrix Flame, three solitary blessings from Primus. He held them tight to his spark, hope bleeding into desperation that he could almost taste, like raw electrical charge and ozone.

Instead of answering he let himself slide slowly downward, half off the crates until he could nestle his helm into Shadow's lap, curled against her side. "That's good," he managed. "That's... thank yeh. _Thank yeh._ " 

It was easier to shutter his optics, cut half his sensor feeds, and concentrate just on the reassurance of her hand against his helm, the touch of pressure and field against his plating. A vent hitched again, just waiting to spasm, and he sucked in a sharp ventilation. "Sorry," he choked. "It's good, it is, Ah can't tell yeh how grateful Ah am... Ah ain't got any good news." Another stutter, and Ironhide pressed his fist into his side, as though pressure alone might regulate the vents that were faltering. "Ah c'n tell yeh th' list yeh don't need t' look for."

Shadow curled protectively over him, grief ghosting through her field. She had known there would be names she didn't want to hear - the overall numbers for the reassigned Guardians were horrific, there was no reason to think the Twelfth would defy those odds - but it hurt to have Ironhide offering her a list. Hurt more because that was a list of his own dead that he had been forced to carry _alone_ for far too long.

"It's what we do, Hide. We take care of our own." She wished, again, that they had known something was wrong sooner, that they hadn't believed... She shuttered her optics and stroked his helm, gentle, reassuring, soothing for the both of them. "You don't have to give me the list right now. You don't have to do anything you aren't ready for. But when you're ready, I'm here. I'm here, and I'll take care of you."

_Grieve with you,_ her field promised. _Keep you from breaking so far you can't put yourself together again. Help pick up the pieces after. Love you._

"You aren't alone anymore," she promised. "We'll get you through this, love. We'll get you all through this." 

He was going to break again, Ironhide knew. It wasn't a question of 'maybe' or 'if', but 'when', and _when_ was looking closer by the nanoklik. Too much, too long, changing too fast - the warmth of Shadow's support was balm and ripping off a wound cling all at once. He concentrated on his vents, on his core temperatures and the workings of his autonomics, trying to will them to run smoothly - or at least _run_ \- for just a bit longer. 

Smaller breaks, he assured himself. Smaller breaks, easier to manage each time, and already this one didn't have the urgent punch that the first had had, even if he couldn't find any way to stop it. He turned his intakes against her plating, cycled in the taste and scent of her mesh, letting the touch and sense of her help quiet the little things that kept trying to tremble their way out of alignment. 

"Can we go back where we were?" he asked at last, voice thick. "Ah'm sorry, Ah... 's too big out here, too empty, Ah can't _stop_ feelin' it."

"Of course we can." Shadow kept touching, her hands now guiding as much as soothing while she coaxed him back to his pedes. "No reason to be sorry; it's what you need, that's all that matters."

Her ship was small enough that nothing was far; she encouraged him to lean into her for the few steps back to the modified storage compartment, and made a point of staying in physical contact while he ducked down and folded himself back inside.  Relief filtered through his field as soon as he had a wall at his back again, intensifying once the hatch was shut and she was tucked around him.

"Here, I've got you." She pressed her helm against his, shielding and sheltering. "I've got you, I'm right here, you're safe. We'll get you through this."

Ironhide pulsed gratitude back, pressing into her. Curled into a solid space, walls taking the place of cohort, was better than the emptiness even with only the two of them to fill the spaces. "They gave meh mah own quarters," he managed after a few intake cycles. The words were meaningless, just helping to fill spaces, centering him enough to keep the shaking at bay. "For officers, 'cus of mah rank. Ah'd never had mah own room before. Didn't want it. Couldn't recharge. Too quiet, too much space."

He bumped his helm softly against her, field shading from gratitude to love. "Like this better."

Shadow nuzzled against him, answering love in her field. "I hate trying to recharge alone," she agreed. "We all..." She paused, laughing softly. "We all share a room that's barely big enough for the thirteen of us. We'll have to move berth pads around when we get back, find a spot that'll fit seventeen." 

The sheer presumption of the words hit her as soon as she heard herself say them, and she ducked close, adding apologetically, "Or we can find a spot for the four of you, if you'd rather. We're not going to force you into anything. I know we're still mostly strangers, it's just...you're our friends." _Guild. Cohort._ "We want to help you, and that's not just getting you out of bad situations."

It took Ironhide a klik to find his voice, nuzzling at the top of her helm to try to convey in touch and the press of field where glyphs were failing him. "Think we'd like that," he said at last, the sound rough. "Stayin', Ah mean. Sharin'. If... if yeh'd have us. We ain't..." He rebooted his vocalizer, static crackling. "We ain't enough, any more. Not by ourselves. Guard's pulled squads back from less'n this, but..." he choked on a laugh, the sound harsh and breaking. "That was when there was a Guard."

"No question if we'll have you. _No_ question, Hide." The sound he made hurt; the words hurt more. "We'll pull you back from this in spite of them."

The flare of anger was something she recognized, the same flashfire reaction of _**enough** , no more_ that had finally led them to all but cut ties with Labyrinth. Cutting ties completely had never been far from any of their processors since that day, preparations long since made for the time when they could no longer live with their wary alliance, or when Labyrinth finally betrayed them...either outright, or through over-reaching himself. They had spent vorn ensuring they could both escape and survive if they had to, and Shadow had no doubt there were a great many things they could do _in spite of_ their erstwhile master, Autobot command, and the Primacy itself, given cause.

She vented, and throttled it all back as something Ironhide didn't need right now. Later, broken might become anger and then resolve; right now, broken was just broken, and needed a safe place to start to heal.

"We want you, all of you, safe and with us," she said quietly. "The base isn't big, but we'll find space. We'll make space. We're not losing you again."

The black, fitful humor that scraped laughter like splintered crystals from him had the words queued - not to worry, there weren't any of the largest of them _left_ \- but it left as quickly as it had come and the names he couldn't make himself speak were all that were left. Vocalizer crackling static, Ironhide curled himself down, small and tight beneath Shadow's slighter mass. 

"Sorry," he managed, vents stuttering, the sound a thin keen. "Sorry, can't... _hurts_." The keen became a wail, clicked and warbled, glyphs and patterns mixed. _::hurts-pain-broken sorry-forgive::_ and "...hated us, felt it on 'im, don't know _why_..." all jumbled together, grief and fear shaking him all over again as he shook through it.

He had curled up as tight as he could, limbs tucked in and plates clamped tight to his frame in an effort to make himself smaller, and he was still shaking, violent tremors that ran through his systems the way grief and panic ran through his field. Shadow crooned to him, vocalizer and engine combining into a soothing harmonic that filled the spaces between Ironhide's agonized keens, and settled herself over and around him physically in much the same way.  She hurt for him, hurt _with_ him, but she could no more have asked him to stop than she could have left him on Cybertron.

She clicked base level reassurances into the pauses, _love_ and _safe-protected_ , _not alone_ and _chosen-wanted-claimed_. She couldn't be sure it _meant_ anything right now, that he could feel anything beyond the hurts tearing at him, but it was a foundation he might feel and remember later.

If not, she could repeat it, as many times as he needed. Frames could be rushed into healing; sparks could not.

* * * * *

Ironhide rebooted to more lapsed time on his chronometer and the rapidly familiar feeling press of Shadow's frame against his own. It was less of a jolt, now, more of a normal reboot cycle, physical systems reading as better even as the ache in spark and processor continued.

It was queued in his vocalizer to apologize but he deleted it before the sound glyphs could be executed. It felt wrong to apologize to her even while he wasn't sure he should be monopolizing her time and effort. He wouldn't, he reasoned, have apologized to one of his own cohort - at least, not for _that_. Apologized for a mission left uncompleted, maybe, but he already knew what their answer would have been. Knew what Shadow's answer was as well, and it rendered the words into nothing but a need to hear the absolution spoken out loud. 

She had been as close to cohort as anyone could have been since the moment she had brought him on board, and he wouldn't do her the disservice of apologizing for what she freely gave. The desperate gratitude in his field was enough.

Instead, he nuzzled against her plates to let her know that he was online and rebooted static from his vocalizer. "How much longer 'til we get there?"

"Depends." Shadow rubbed a soothing hand across his plates. He sounded better, felt better, systems running more smoothly, fewer discordant jolts in the wavelengths of his field. Still broken, yes, but _better_. "Autopilot can be overridden, but the default is to decrease the odds of being followed by dynamically plotting an indirect course. As it stands..." she paused to query the ship for their location relative to the base and the current course, "unless something comes into sensor range and makes us replot our course, we have the better part of a standard duty shift. Or I can contact one of the others, have them override so we're brought straight in, and then we'll be there in half a breem or less." 

She nuzzled against him, letting her relief at having him there and safe filter into her field. "I'm not in any rush." She pulsed love and reassurance and understanding at him. "Knew it had to have gotten bad to have you request extraction like that, and I figured you could use a chance to cycle down once I got you out. Now, it's up to you. If you're ready to meet everyone, say the word and I'll have us pulled in; if you aren't, I'll force a course change and buy us a few more breems. If you don't want to decide, we'll just let the ship do what it does. It's not like I'm going to drag you off the second we dock." 

Indeed, she was more than happy to stay where they were indefinitely, if it would help keep the pain and panic and desperation out of his field and start to repair the damage done. She hoped he would sense and understand that there was no timeframe but what he needed, but just in case he needed words as well...

Slowly, Shadow moved so she could cup his face between her hands and press her forehelm to his, trusting he would recognize the words and understand the intent behind them. "There is no hurry."

Ironhide shuttered his optics for a long klik, just leaning into her touch and field. _Safety_ , it whispered. _Protection-back up-not alone_.

He could, he thought dimly, stay there forever, but the universe didn't stop spinning just because he wanted it so.

"Lastline," he said at last, the sound barely vocalized. "If he's comin' in faster - Ah need t' get t' him." Senior cohort, imprinted on Ironhide's spark in the first moments following onlining. A steady unwavering presence through his whole functioning, and, most importantly, a ranking member who, by seniority, outranked Ironhide himself. The ache to turn it all over, to not _have_ to make the crucial decisions, was a palpable pain through every overstressed system. 

He covered Shadow's hands with his own, holding them against his faceplates. "If not... just let th' ship do its thing. Better safe, yeah?"

"Better safe," Shadow agreed.  "Cam will come in slow, too; there's no reason not to, and every reason to do this right. We aren't going to risk any of you."

_You're our priority,_ she thought, but didn't say; the words, spoken aloud, felt too likely to put an uncomfortable focus on him and his cohort, even if he _was_ presently the full focus of her attention. Actions were more comfortable; she kept her frame pressed close to his, systems cycled low to encourage him to sync to them, and twined her field soothingly through the unsteady frequencies of his own.

"You get enough fuel before?" she asked, after a few kliks of letting them just _be_ , the sounds of their systems the only things in the small space.  "You're still running a little hot, and there's no lack." She didn't move her hands from where they were still held against his face, just turned to rub her cheek against his helm. "No reason to move, either, if you don't want to."

Ironhide turned his face into her palm, intakes sampling metal and oil scents. Offensively intimate, by the standards of what he had seen among the Autobot encampments, where even a hand gripped on shoulder pauldron was a rarity. She wasn't one of them, though, and he didn't think she would mind - trusted her to say if she did. The touch and closeness were comforting, keeping him wrapped in that first impression of safety, systems cycled low and easy.

His primary tank was half full - not so low as to need immediate attention and moving away from the position they were in sounded like nothing he wanted. "'m fine," he told her. "This is good." They were already, of her own volition, pressed plate to plate. Ironhide dared to free one arm, wrapping it up and around her back where he could hold on in return. 

It was comfortable to lay curled into each other for long kliks, just listening to the thrum of her systems and feeling his own fall into synch with them. Ironhide shuttered his optics, soaking in the feel. Only the quiet inbetween their systems felt wrong, too still, and finally he exvented and filled it with quiet words. "So - tell meh what yeh've been up t' while we've been out?" Something like a laugh - a genuine sound of amusement - rumbled through his vocalizer. "Viper ever get that full set of gear he had his systems in a knot about?"

An answering laugh, as much exasperation as amusement. "Primus, yes. He didn't give us a moment's rest until he had every last piece of it. Cam bought a mammoth so we could repair between wipes, or else Viper was going to have gear and the rest of us were going to be running around in just our fur. The good news is, all that raiding put the guild up a level and a half." 

Shadow paused, pushing down _we could have used you_ and _we missed you_ and _I wish you'd been there_ , and the reflexive impulse to ask what he'd been doing, where his cohort was. "Tundra maxed out her jewelcrafting so she could make us those panther mounts, and bugged Phase into maxing out her mining getting materials, and now they've both gotten bored and switched professions. And I have a mount you haven't seen yet; hit exalted with the Golden Lotus. I'll walk you through their dailies; they're a pain in the aft, but still more fun than playing with Viper, and you get a crane out of it."

She exvented, nuzzling against him, reminding herself he was here and safe, and voiced the least of what she was feeling. "It'll be good to play with you again. Missed you."

"Missed yeh too." Ironhide replied quietly. "Sorry Ah couldn't get on sooner. Wiped all th' game files before we were recalled. Needed th' space." He pressed his face against her helm, venting another low laugh. "Only got on when Ah did because some glitchwitted recruits were playin' in their down time, tyin' up th' comm lines. Confiscated a game chip off one of 'em when Ah was writin' 'em up."

Relief and pain, riding so close together he could barely tell where one ended and the other began. He exvented carefully and held her closer. All of the things that he needed to tell her were locked up in his systems, teetering on edges he didn't dare to drop off. The shared language of their game made it easier but he pulled her a little closer, twining his field through her in an effort to cushion, pain shared lessening somewhat. "Someone... someone's gonna have t' swap t' tailorin', or we're gonna end up short."

It took a handful of nanokliks for her to process what he was saying; her vents stuttered when she finally realized, and she ducked her helm against the solidity of Ironhide's shoulder. She had known there would be guildmates missing, had thought herself braced for it, but that didn't lessen the sense of loss. 

Wildstrike. She had known him, raided with him, escorted him through zones he had no business being in at his level, and one memorable time, mocked him for charging headlong into a horde encampment... only to wind up spending half a breem and a fair amount of her avatar's credits buying his avatar drinks, to celebrate his unlikely victory until he had laughingly admitted the game screen had whited out and the game wouldn't let him access the controls anymore. And when she hadn't been playing with him directly, she and Ironhide had farmed countless stacks of cloth for him, so the guild could be decked out in the best bags and gear he could produce.

He had tracked down the patterns to create utterly useless-but-decorative cloth armor for her avatar, for no better reason than she had seen it and expressed a desire to wear it to the game's faire.

It _hurt_ that she was never going to get to meet him in the mesh. That the mounts and fabric saved for him in the guild vault would never be claimed. That Ironhide was never again going to greet her with some ridiculous request for stack upon stack of cloth that they could spend breems farming together.

It hurt, but it hurt worse for Ironhide, who had _known_ him outside of the game, she reminded herself. She made herself loosen her grip, and focused on the game to buffer reality. "Phase'll probably take it up." The words sounded hollow. "I don't think she really likes inscription, and that...that'll be covered again once Palisade is with us."

The sound he made wasn't a laugh, too hollow and flat, but it tried. "Palisade don't like it much either but somebody had to take it. He said shovin' glyphs on us was about th' same as naggin' us about maintenance all th' time."

Ironhide held her closer, field pulsing equal parts love and grief. "Ah'm sorry," he said softly. "Ah'm sorry Ah don't have better news. Ah..." he pressed his face against her helm, struggling to hold to and project the faint glimmers of good instead of the spark draining pain.

"Wildstrike would've loved yeh," he confided to her. "Yer th' same color. He'd've wanted yeh painted up with matchin' accents and dragged yeh out t' all th' bars t' show it off." The sound that hiccuped out of his vents was almost a real laugh and for a few precious kliks he held to it, not the bottomless grief of his new reality but the easing remembrance that had been their reality _before_ , shared with Shadow as he had always shared it with his own cohort. 

"We used t' do that all th' time, offduty. Paintin' him, 'cus he liked it. Ain't sayin' we were all that artistic - Nitro's got a good hand on him, but Wildstrike always wore it anyways, no matter what we did." Another small laugh, holding her close just to share the faded memory of other laughter with her through field and a pinged image series of a black mech in Ironhide's frame class, done up with accent paints that ranged from striking to ridiculous. "Burn an' Ah did a glyph knot of every swear word we knew on his back once. Bright yellow on black. He wore it t' an officers meetin' with top commanders. Said it didn't matter 'cus they didn't see his back 'til he was leavin' an' what were they gonna do when he was already out th' door?"

He nuzzled gently against Shadow's helm, hand stroking over her backplates. "Crazy outta game as he was in it. Best captain we could've had. He..." He faltered slightly, the warmth of the memory tinged bittersweet. "He was there when they brought me online. First time Ah booted up, he was th' one in mah systems loadin' up mah code." 

Ironhide vented - carefully, feeling for how broken it felt in his systems and reassured that it felt only a little worse than it had. "Almost glad for it," he admitted quietly. "He went before it all happened. They said... said the decommissioning wouldn't take on him. Irreconcilable core errors, offlined him in th' process. Meant he didn't have t' see how it all fell apart after." His voice dropped flatter, pure grating metal, field pulling tight with a thrumming anger. "Him an' Rampart both."

It was, at least, easier to hear the news like this, frames and fields tangled together, the warmth of Ironhide's memories easing some of the pain. "Wish we'd had a chance to meet in the mesh," Shadow said, with the faintest of smiles at the images Ironhide shared. "We would have looked _amazing_ together."

Tucked in this tight against him, she could feel the anger vibrating through his frame as surely as through his field. Reassuring, in its own way, that he had strength enough to fuel anger, and she let her own anger ghost along the edges of his, temporarily muting the second stab of grief at hearing Rampart's name.

"Better for them," she agreed quietly, "but it still doesn't mean any of this should have happened." _Should_ \- like right and wrong, like trust and loyalty - didn't apply to those in power over them, Shadow knew; she couldn't be surprised that someone, in some position of power, had thought that level of code butchery a good idea, had been allowed to implement it. Once upon a time, someone had thought _Labyrinth_ was a good idea, after all. It kept her shock personal, bound up in pain and loss rather than surprise; the anger was, in a way, as much a product of that lack of surprise as of what had been done.

She leaned into him, optics offlined, and channeled the anger until there was nothing but love and resolve in her field. A promise, cohort to cohort. "We aren't losing any more of you. Whatever it takes, we aren't losing any more."

The echo of Shadow's matching anger eased some of the knot of Ironhide's own - shared, like memories and grief, it became something bearable instead of the clawing, tearing shards in his spark. 

Shuttering his own optics, he leaned against her, just venting, just _feeling_. Letting himself feel, the implicit promise in her field, the undertones of _wanted-needed_ that fell like disinfectant cleanser against the spark deep rot and doubt that had taken root in his core. 

_Not alone_ , she whispered to him, voiceless, and he curled into her, echoing love and gratitude back, and let himself believe.

* * * * *

Lastline sat stiffly where he was told to sit, very aware that the ship was made for its owner and not for his own size class. It kept his movements contained, too aware of where pede and mass went, though he had unsubspaced a circuit relay he had been working on just to give his hands something to _do_ in the silence.

The owner of the ship was just as quiet, focused on his instruments, and nothing short of an enigma to the munitions mech. Once, Lastline would have classified the mech as a scout class based on mass and presumed speed. Now, too aware that non-standardized frame types came in varied and assorted compositions, he had still settled back on the mental classification of 'scout' because of the competent infiltration and extraction the mech had displayed was most certainly the type of skill set that came in scout classes.

Which left the question of who or what he was scouting _for_. Lastline kept a sidelong optic on his erstwhile benefactor, maintaining a visual on the green mech (a different green than his own accents, they clashed there though it was a complementary striking color against Lastline's primary yellow). Not, he thought sourly, that he could diagnose or parse anything untowards in the mech's handling of the ship, certainly not in time to stop it, but knowing where the other was and what he was doing helped to give Lastline something to focus on. Between that and the circuit in his hands, he had managed silence through lift off and an adroit circumnavigation of Cybertronian immediate space. Credit where it was due - he wasn't sure one of their own could have done any better.

"Why?" he asked at last, the word crackling into the silence from nowhere except the crowded hammering of his own thought threads. 

Cam had been waiting for the question...not that question, specifically, but something to break the other mech's benumbed silence. He had gotten Lastline onto his ship with only the barest of explanations - and that was telling, painfully so - and nothing had broken the silence since but the muted growl of the frontliner's systems.

He didn't answer immediately, because the most accurate answer was complicated. Or ridiculously simple. There were reasons, explanations that may or may not make sense outside of his own cohort...but in the end, they all cycled back around to one thing, and the simple explanation was the one he went with.

"Ironhide asked us to."

Except that Ironhide hadn't _asked_ , hadn't needed to. He'd given them names and places and unmistakable signs of his own injury, and they had proceeded exactly as they would have for any of the Thirteen: retrieve the objectives, extract the operative, move everything safely under their  own control. The obvious course of action, done without hesitation because _one of their own_ had needed it, and the only problem now was that Lastline didn't know them, didn't have any reason to know that Ironhide fell into the sphere they considered cohort.

Cam aimed his ship towards a derelict satellite, knocked into an erratic orbit Primus only knew how long before, too old to be worth retrieval and repair and too small to be worth salvage. Safe enough that they used it as a supply cache, and expendable in the unlikely event they were being followed, or that Lastline's silence was a prelude to the mech snapping. He reported his destination back to base, and turned to face his guest. 

"Ironhide asked us to," he said again. "He's known us long enough and well enough that he _can_ ask. No other reason."

One sparkpulse passed, then another. "Because yeh played games together," Lastline clarified. It sounded as strikingly ridiculous in glyphs as it did in his own processor. He shuttered his optics and tried to imagine... failed, miserably, and gave it up for lost. 

He knew others of his cohort formed ties outside of the Guard on occasion but his lineage was Logian, not Solarian or Amalgian or any of the other more outgoing polarities and he had never been very good at associating with mecha outside his sparked ties. He had never heard of it going past the point of the sort of casual friend who might be invited along for a rotation of bar drinks on leave. He couldn't imagine any of that sort of occasional acquaintance going out of their way to retrieve someone they didn't even know from a secure position, risking ship and spark in the process. 

He was, he knew, being sharply brittle in field and voice, more so than his erstwhile rescuer had done anything to deserve. He felt hollowed out inside, not enough left beneath the sharp bite of his exterior to modulate it with. Venting, Lastline throttled himself down, setting his engine into a steadier growl and switching on subroutines that scrubbed the xeno sounds from his glyphs. It was no more courtesy, he reminded himself, than he had been giving his so-called commanding officer for the last orns. 

"I'm grateful," he told the other stiffly when he could formulate the words properly, "don't think I'm not. Whatever it is you need, if it's within my ability, it's yours."

"Because we played games together," Cam confirmed, and maybe that was the core of the disconnect. Other mecha played games together, but the Thirteen, as a rule, did not. Not on any kind of long term basis, not to the point where they could say they _knew_ the mecha on the other side of the game, or where they looked for names outside of their own cohort when they logged in. Viper still played with the single-minded intensity that was his nature, but the rest of them had all logged in, at one point or another, for no better reason than the other half of their guild was on and available to chat.

Even when he tried to look at it from Lastline's perspective, the _of course, we had to_ lingered in the back of his processor.

"And we don't need anything from you," he continued quietly. "Just you, in one piece." He offered the other mech a wry smile. "Because Ironhide asked us to."

That, at the crux of the matter, was the core that had gotten Lastline aboard the stranger's ship and the core that kept him from pushing harder for answers. _Ironhide_. His cohortmate had asked and whatever he had promised his friends, whatever strings he had pulled, if Ironhide was waiting then Lastline would follow a complete stranger into the Pit to reach him. 

"I'm grateful," he repeated, because it seemed to bear repeating. The other mech was eyeing him like a puzzle to be solved, maybe, or as though Cam wasn't sure what Lastline might or might not do. It was a look he'd become familiar with in the last orns, something he was used to people directing at the munitions he worked on, not at himself. Cam, to his credit, didn't display the caution or outright fear of some, but there was still a waiting sort of caution there. 

Lastline climbed carefully to his pedes. The other had said he was free to make himself more comfortable after they left the satellite surveillance levels, and there was a space rear of the control seats that looked large enough to sit with a bit of stretch to his legs. He paused as he was passing Cam's seat, not looking the other in the optics, and vented a weary cycle. "You don't have to worry," he told the other bluntly. "The codes didn't really take on me. They had me working in manufacturing because I probably couldn't hurt you even if I wanted to." 

He didn't need to see the mech's optics on him to feel them. Lastline clenched his armor tighter to his frame and settled himself on the open bit of floor, stretched out his pedes, and let his chin dip towards his chassis, optics shuttered. Recharge was out of the question but the semblance of it might avoid any further stilted awkwardness, at least for awhile.


End file.
